This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Typical computer networks may include a variety of devices serving different functions. As one example, computer networks typically include one or more servers that provide connectivity and shared resources to users of the network. Servers typically connect to the network via network interface cards (NICs) that facilitate communication with the network by wire and/or wireless mediums. To improve throughput and to provide some degree of fault tolerance, a server may be equipped with more than one NIC connected to the network.
If multiple NICs are present within a server, it may be desirable to coordinate their operation or to handle them as one virtual or logical NIC. For example, multiple NICs within a server may be coordinated to function as a single virtual NIC, i.e., as a NIC team. In such a NIC team, each member of the NIC team is separately connected to the network, but the operating system and clients of the network generally see the NIC team as a single NIC interface having one hardware and one protocol address. As long as connectivity is maintained throughout the network, it is generally irrelevant to what devices, such as switches, hubs, bridges, routers, concentrators, etc., the different NICs of the NIC team are connected.
However, connectivity failures between devices on a network may result in members of the NIC team being on separate network segments from one another. For example, a physical line disruption or a misconfiguration of a switch may result in different NICs of the NIC team being connected to separate network segments. In such a case, connectivity to the server may be lost for some clients, with those clients on a network segment connected through the primary NIC of the NIC team continuing to see the server while those clients on other network segments lose connectivity. To the extent that the clients retaining connectivity may not represent the highest priority clients or the majority of clients, the effects of the connectivity failure may be exacerbated. Typically, recovery from such a disruption involves administrator intervention, i.e., manual reconfiguration of the NIC team, which may result in undesirable down time of network resources for priority clients.